Description and research notes
Issued banknote of the Banco Oriental of Uruguay, dated 1 de Agosto de 1867 and printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York. Although produced from the same engraved plates as the standard single-signature issue, this example documents a brief and highly unusual authorization phase in which two handwritten circulation signatures were applied to a single note.
The obverse design is identical to the standard 1867 Banco Oriental issue, featuring allegorical female figures representing Commerce and Abundance at left, the national coat of arms at right, and a prominent central orange guilloche bearing the inscription “UN DOBLÓN DE ORO SELLADO.” This inscription emphasized gold convertibility and was central to public confidence in privately issued paper money during Uruguay’s mid-nineteenth-century monetary development.
Serial number 23286 is distinguished by the presence of two fully handwritten circulation signatures, one placed at the left side and one at the right side of the signature area. This is the only known authorization state of the issue in which dual manual signatures were simultaneously required. Both signatures were applied in ink after printing and numbering, reflecting a temporary internal control measure rather than a change in design or denomination.
The dual-signature configuration represents a short-lived administrative experiment within the Banco Oriental. It was introduced after the original single-signature format and abandoned before the adoption of mechanically printed facsimile signatures. The rapid implementation and reversal of this requirement strongly suggests heightened oversight or institutional uncertainty rather than a planned production standard.
This note is designated by Paper Money Guaranty as plate position pp B, matching the plate position recorded on other known examples of the 1867 issue. While PMG does not formally define plate position distinctions within the Pick catalog, such annotations provide additional production context and allow precise comparison among surviving notes.
Cataloged under Pick S385a together with all other issued 1867 Banco Oriental 10 Pesos Doblón notes, this dual handwritten signature state is not separately recognized by standard catalogs. Nevertheless, its extreme scarcity among surviving examples indicates that it represents the rarest authorization variant of the entire issue.
Within a complete study of the Banco Oriental Doblón series, serial 23286 occupies a pivotal position. It documents an otherwise unrecorded moment in the bank’s authorization practice and provides direct physical evidence of a transitional control mechanism that was quickly abandoned, leaving very few survivors.